She noticed the man had stopped again, nearer this time, allowing her to close the distance between them. She came within twenty meters before she recognized him. Dano had come home.
The police officer still in her struggled with the fact that he was a robber. No matter. She pushed the policewoman deeper inside herself, remembering that they were both outcasts. She took his arm, threading his fingers through hers. Two lonely people walking home.
They did not say a word as they walked. Dano seemed to be in a daze. Jana’s instincts, and needs, told her to accept the moment for whatever it was. No one bothered them; no one seemed to notice their presence. The neighbors were filled a space in another part of the universe than the place the two of them shared.
When they got to Jana’s front door, she unlocked it. Both were comfortable in the shelter of the house. Jana took off her coat. Dano looked around, no longer familiar with the house as he once had been. He took the changes in: Things were shabbier, the walls needed painting. He was bone-weary, not from working two jobs as Jana was, but from the burden of trying to create a world he wanted and couldn’t have. Dano was lost; he was beaten. She finally led him to an armchair, gently pushing him down into it.
“I only have tea.”
“Tea is good.”
“Are you as hungry as you look?”
“A little hungry,” he acknowledged.
She hustled into the kitchen, feeling eager, lighter than she had in years, quickly washing her face, neck, and arms in the sink, hoping he hadn’t noticed how drab she looked. She put the kettle on for tea, then searched in the refrigerator. Not very good. It was filled with leftovers from half-eaten meals. There was a little hope: two eggs, not enough for a complete meal, but a start.
The cupboards were next, but they were so barren and disappointing that she had to restrain herself at the last moment from slamming the doors. There was a bag of flour. Thankful, she pulled out a mixing bowl, poured flour into it, cracked both eggs on top of the flour, added water, then mixed it well. A second later, she had put a pan on a high flame just to get it warm quickly. Then, when it was hot enough, she spooned butter in. She turned the flame lower, and then she set about brewing the tea.
Five minutes later, her hair now tidied up, Jana came out of the kitchen with pancakes on a large platter, a half jar of apricot jam rescued from the back of the refrigerator, and pre-sweetened tea the way Dano liked it. She set it in front of him to help himself.
He stared at the platter.
“It’s all I have in the house.” She was worried that he would blame her. “It will be good to see you eat.”
“Just a taste.” He took a forkful of pancake without the jam. Jana ladled jam on the remainder of the pancake. He looked at it, chewing slowly. “I think one may be enough.” He took a sip of the tea. “You know, I’ve developed a taste for coffee.” He set the cup down, staring into space.
Jana found that she was irritated. Her perceptions were that Dano needed food, but he didn’t want what she had. He eventually agreed that he would take tea because it was the only beverage in the house; now he criticized it because it was not coffee.
“I have nothing else to give you, Dano,” she said. He continued to sit, staring into space. Didn’t he realize that she was hungry too? Maybe she should encourage him to eat by eating herself? She forked a piece of pancake into her mouth and chewed enthusiastically, then took a mouthful of tea. “It’s good to have food in your belly.” She took another forkful.
“I am sorry that you did not come with me.” Dano did not look at her as he spoke. “It would have been easier.”
Jana’s irritation increased. “There was no possible way I would have come. None at all. You knew that; you told me to stay here. Why are you now saying I should have come?”
“We would have been together.”
“You wanted to go on a mission. I read about you, heard about you. The new Messiah come to bring the idolaters and despoilers down.” She did not like the direction the conversation was taking. However, her rising anger refused to allow her to stop, so she rushed on. “You were the one who left us. You were the one who had a daughter. She needed you here!”
Dano started to stir. His voice took on a sharp, edgy quality. “Could I let her be brought up in the conditions in this country? Would it have been better to let her see me rotting away, a little bit every day? No.”
“Our family was not so badly off. We had a house. I had a good job. My mother was happy. The family was fine. Since you went on your selfish way, we now have Katka far away from her home being brought up by someone else, my job gone, my mother dead, and you a fugitive.”
Dano finally looked directly at her. She had reached him. Jana got up and moved away. “I do not like this government. I do not like what they did to you.” She corrected herself. “No, I do not like what they did to both of us. Did that mean I should run and hide?”
“I stood up. I didn’t run and hide!”
“The actor stood up for his bow. That’s what you did, played a role and waited for the applause. Who were you? Moses bringing the Ten Commandments to his people? Did they applaud when you came down from the mountain? If they applauded, I could not hear it.”
Dano closed his eyes for a moment, waiting for some inner voice to tell him how to respond. Then he managed to open them as if afraid to see reality. “Did I do you an injury? Did I do my daughter an injury? It was a risk. I knew that; you knew that, when I left. I did not think I was playing a stage part. It was real. Realize something: I hated myself for leaving; I would have hated myself more if I had stayed.”
“I stayed, Dano.”
“I know.” He shrank a little. “We both have been damaged. I wish it were not so.”
“Dano, you became a bank robber.”
“We needed the money to keep going. The Party needed it.”
Jana’s anger, which had started to abate, flared up again, stronger this time. “The Party needed it,” she mimicked. “How many of you were there? Five or six people, that was your Party. It was not a political movement; it was an armed outlaw band.”
“We had others. They needed the money to publish, to hold meetings, to fight the establishment in other ways.”
“Fight the establishment? You sound like the establishment. The government. The Party. You became like them. Everything and anything for the Party.” She was drained. She felt anguish for Dano, her lover, her husband, the father of her daughter. She felt it for herself.
Jana picked up the plate of uneaten pancakes to take them back into the kitchen. She turned to face him once more. “My god, a man died in one of your armed attacks, Dano. Think about that. He had not committed a crime.”
“We knew there was risk.”
“How dare you decide what he should risk? Did you ask him?”
“I didn’t want him to die.”
“That’s what most robbers say.” She walked into the kitchen with the plate, then heard the door open. It should not end on this note, she told herself, hurrying back to the front room.
Dano was standing at the open door, looking out. Then he stepped back inside, closing the door.
“They’re here.” He had a resigned look on his face. “They’ve come for their criminal.”
Jana ran to the window, pushing the curtain aside. Police cars were parking, more were driving down the street. There were armed men everywhere. She let the curtain fall back.
Dano smiled, the captivating smile she remembered when they first began to go together. “It had to end.”
She nodded, not knowing what she could say. “I’m sorry,” was what came out.
“It isn’t right. I brought them to this house.” He quickly stepped over to her, kissing her on the cheek. “I’m going to wash up. I want to look clean for the photos they will take.” He walked toward the back of the house. “Just let them in when they knock.”
Jana heard footsteps on the front stair. There was a long pause. Maybe they were trying to decide whether to break in without demanding entry. Why have them damage the front door, she thought. Just open it, Jana. She was reaching for the doorknob when she heard the shot.
As if in a distorted dream, she watched herself opening the door. Trokan was standing there, alone. He stepped in, closing the door behind him.
“Where is he?” Trokan asked.
“In the back,” she heard herself say.
Trokan walked to the back of the small house. Time stopped, she would swear afterward. Even the ticking of clocks was stilled. The air did not move. The sun was fixed in place. The world had stopped revolving. No pulse, no breath, no life.
Trokan came back, holding her service revolver by the barrel. He walked over to her, placing the butt of the gun in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “It is a good thing you shot the fugitive murderer, Matinova. Otherwise we would have to believe you were giving him shelter. That, of course, would mean prison.” He walked to the door, opening it. “I’m calling the others in. Congratulations on your proving your loyalty to our country and our principles of justice.”
He walked out. Three weeks later, a state hero, she was reinstated in the police force at her full rank.
Chapter 42
T
he old man was crying. Not carrying on, wailing, or beating his breast. He was quiet, with the exception of a sound like a stifled hiccup which escaped his flaccid mouth from time to time. Tears rolled down his cheeks, released from his eyes almost in synchronization with the hiccups, wiped away by the back of his hand only when they reached his white pencil-thin moustache. His hair was very thin, yellow-white with age, dulled instead of brightened by the cheap hair gel that had been applied, the sparse hair combed both across and back on his head.
Jana could not tell, as she and Levitin sat across from Mr. Lermentov at his desk, whether he was short or tall. Grief and age had shrunk him into himself. He was mourning his wife, mourning the ending of a part of his life he would never experience again.
Jana waited for Lermentov to collect himself. She used the gap in the conversation to look around the Russian Friends Committee office. It was one large, drafty room papered with posters of Russia, Russian celebrities, Russian cities, a tossed salad of Russian life in travel posters, pinned to the walls, all of them browning at the edges, the most recent ode to Russia at least five years old.
The woman volunteer at the other desk, Veronike, a heavyset lump with no neck and a vivid yellow wig that emphasized rather than concealed her attempts to combat the ravages of time, occasionally would look up from the papers strewn across her desktop to glare at the two intruders bothering her friend in his time of grief.
Jana eventually had enough of the glare. She turned to Lermentov, interrupting his mourning with a raised hand. The old man seemed to hold his breath, waiting for her to give him permission to proceed with his grief. He settled for answering questions.
“You were together a long time?”
“Very long,” he nodded.
“When did the men come to talk to her?
“She called me here.” He paused, trying to remember.
The woman in the ratty yellow wig raised her head to fix them with another stare, giving Jana her answer as an afterthought. “Nine thirty. She called then.”
He nodded. “Yes, nine thirty.”
There was another period of withdrawal, emphasized by hiccups and tears. Again, Jana held up her hand and Lermentov focused on it as if it were a vehicular stop sign, quieting himself.
“Did she tell you why she was going with the men?”
He nodded. “Money. I told her not to.” He reflected on his warning to her. “Don’t do this, I told her twice. She was whispering into the phone. She went to the bedroom to talk to me without them knowing. She understood the danger. She wanted the money. So she took them with her.”
Levitin leaned over to come closer to Lermentov. “Did they tell your wife what they were after?”
Lermentov seemed surprised by the question. “They wanted the woman. She came to us for help. She was running and hiding. We knew that. We helped her. We got her a hotel room. Then she found another place. I didn’t know where that was. She never told us.”
“How did your wife know where the apartment was if Sasha didn’t tell you?”
“They posted a notice here and at the club.” He stood up, shaky, steadying himself with a hand on the desk, then shuffled over to a large cork bulletin board hanging at a slightly lopsided angle on the wall next to the front door. He pulled the pins from a small group of cards, then brought them back to the desk, selected the one he wanted and read it aloud. “We are anxious to find our dear niece Alexandra Levitin. Five hundred Euro reward for correct information. Leave message with answering service.” He pointed to the card. “The phone number is here.”
Levitin took the card from him. Lermentov seemed not to notice. “These were posted everywhere.”
“Your wife saw it?”
“Yes.” Lermentov looked into the distance. “She called all over town. To every
immoblier.
Sasha mentioned an acquaintance who worked in one. My wife could be very clever. She wheedled, begged, threatened, all of those things and more.” He looked from Jana to Levitin, then back again. “You know, I could never make money. My wife, she pushed me. I should have done better.” He thought about what he had said. “Not only me. She pushed everyone.”
He had a series of hiccups, his tears coming faster. The woman at the other desk came over, glared at Levitin and Jana, and then handed Lermentov an embroidered handkerchief. “She was a good person at heart.”
He nodded, wiping his tears away.
“A hard worker,” the woman continued. “She helped others.”
He nodded again.
“It was the money. Too much for anyone to resist.” The woman glared at Jana and Levitin, daring them to correct her. “Money makes people turn against their friends.” She walked back to her desk. “I have your tickets to the dinner-dance. Do you want them?” She held a small ticket envelope up in the air, waving it at Lermentov.